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5/10/2013

Chinese Film Director could face fine of up to $26 million for fathering seven children, some thoughts

Assume for a second that the Chinese policy on the number of children makes sense, if you have seven children with seven different women, shouldn't that be treated differently than seven children with the same woman? Also, why should higher income individuals pay such a much much higher fine for having kids? Why discourage the smartest, most successful people from having kids? Presumably, if higher income individuals tried to cheat, it would make enforcement against lower income people more difficult. But I wonder if that is true. In the US (where speeding fines are based on the crime) or Finland (where they are also based on income), do you have more people breaking speed limits? I don't know the answer, but it would be interesting to check. The simplest way would be to see if these relative rates changed when Finland changed the way it fined speeding. From the Vancouver Sun: